It took me a while to feel like I was ready to tackle this hefty book, both because of its size, but also its high praise -- I always fear a book with so much buzz will fall flat for me, or one as highly lauded will go completely over my head. But once I got started, just like everyone said, it went surprisingly quickly and kept me engage... until about the last 100 pages. One thing that makes me feel invested in a book is good well depicted characters, and Min Jin Lee has a knack for that.

I did feel like the story fizzled out at the end, leaving some characters' storylines unfinished and making me rush through it just to finish. There are lots of themes here: hope, parental roles and influence, class issues, identity, to name a few. I also liked that it taught me so much about Korean history, something I was embarrassingly ignorant of.

While this book didn't impact me like it did some people, it's a story that will stick with me for a long time, one I'm very glad I finally worked up the motivation to read.

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